Former Top Obama Aide on Obamacare: Implementation Will Be ‘Messy’, But ‘We’ll End Up in a Better Place’

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(FILE)

The official debut of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, known as “Obamacare,” is less than 10 months away and officials who helped develop it are now warning that its implementation will be “messy.”

During a Center for American Progress seminar on Obamacare, Jeffery Crowley, a former top Obama aide who had a hand in crafting the Affordable Care Act, said “we know it’s going to be messy,” according to Washington Secrets.

“There are going to be things that come up that are unanticipated,” he explained.

Discussing…the law’s impact on HIV/AIDS and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, the president’s former director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy and senior advisor on disability policy added, “if we do everything we can possibly think of, it’s still going to be a messy transition, but we’ll end up in a better place.”

Added Kali Lindsey, director of legislative and public affairs at the National Minority AIDS Council, “one of the realities of the Affordable Care Act is that everything is not going to be perfect when it’s implemented on day one.”

One element of confusion will be providing healthcare to immigrants. Undocumented workers were not covered by Obamacare, but federal officials are rushing to win approval of immigration reform that will expand coverage to illegals.

The following graphic put together by McClatchy Newspapers provides an idea of when upcoming Obamacare regulations will go into effect: